Product Description

Agatha Christie wrote over 100 plays, short story collections, and novels, which have been translated into 103 languages, and she has been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.No one has succeeded in copying her, though many have tried, and she remains the best selling modern writer throughout the world. For all her success and renown, however, Agatha Christie was a very private person. Over the years, many have attempted to capture her personality, her motivations, and the reasons for her enduring popularity, with little notable success. Now Charles Osborne, a lifelong student of Agatha Christie, has undertaken an examination of Christie and her accomplishments through her own work. The result is a comprehensive, illustrated guide to the world of Agatha Christie, featuring authoritative information on each book's provenance and on it's contemporary critical reception set against the background of the major events in the author's life.Illustrated with rarely seen photos and updated to include details of the publications, films and TV adaptations of her writings, this book provides fascinating reading for any Christie aficionado. AUTHORBIO: Charles Osborne is an internationally known expert on opera and theater who has written several books on the topics as well as novels, literary studies, and poetry.He is the author of three bestselling novelizations of Agatha Christie plays-Black Coffee (SMP, 1998), The Unexpected Guest (Minotaur, 1999), and Spider's Web (Minotaur, 2000). Osborne was born in Australia and lives in London.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6041356 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Though she has been dead for 25 years, was fond of self-deprecating comments ("What I'm writing is meant to be entertainment") and many of her later books suffered from faults that would have derailed the career of a lesser author, Agatha Christie remains a beloved figure. She also remains a reliable source of mystery sales and a subject of critical attention. Osborne, who has successfully novelized three of Christie's plays (Black Coffee; Spider's Web; and The Unexpected Guest), here offers a (largely) chronological listing of the author's oeuvre complete with biographical notes that form a useful context for readers. In the preface, the author assures the reader that nowhere will he reveal the identity of any of Christie's murderers. In fact, he warns readers of instances where Christie reveals in one novel who the murder was in a previous case. Osborne does, however, offer frequent advice about clues the reader should pay particular attention to advice not all readers will welcome. Osborne is an exceedingly forgiving critic; he acknowledges the frequent anti-Semitic elements in the early writings, the careless errors throughout her work and the increasingly sloppy efforts that marred the last of her novels, but he always finds redeeming value. At the end are bibliographies of novels, short stories, plays and films, as well as a useful index. Television treatments are dealt with in the text. (June 4)Encyclopedia (2000) provided extensive descriptive coverage of the same material but only a brief biographical sketch.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Charles Osborne is an internationally known expert on opera and theater who has written several books on the topics as well as novels, literary studies, and poetry. He is the author of three bestselling novelizations of Agatha Christie plays-Black Coffee (SMP, 1998), The Unexpected Guest (Minotaur, 1999), and Spider's Web (Minotaur, 2000). Osborne was born in Australia and lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Christie Bibliofile
Charles Osborne was chosen by the Christie estate to convert some of her plays into novel form. Last week we saw the first production of "Chimneys" a long lost play adapted from the novel, THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS. Some times this works, but not always.
THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is a great reference work for checking publication dates and some story lines when so many titles are being reissued under a new title. It is plodding in its descriptions of the personal life of a very shy private woman. Some of the less than exemplary titles are given the same status of the great ones and any author has a flop, the one that just doesn't cut the mustard.
A writer of Dame Christie's status is to be congratulated for having so few bloopers.
Writing as a Small BusinessSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelQualifying Laps: A Brewster County NovelNatchez Above The River: A Family's Survival In The Civil War

Mildly Interesting Survey of Christie's Life and Works
Agatha Christie (1890-1972)is generally considered the single most widely published and read novelist in the history of publishing. Best known for mystery novels featuring such characters as Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, she was also a noted dramatist and memorable short story writer, and under the name Mary Westmacott generated several well-regarded works as well. But for all her fame, her private life--as Lady Mallowan--was indeed private: although she made the occasional public appearance for the sake of her latest venture, she resisted public intrusion; even her autobiography, although entertaining, is somewhat uninformative.

Published in 1982, Charles Osborne's THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is typical of the numerous "Life and Works" books re Christie: it tells you nothing you will not find in a dozen sources or more. But it does so in meticulous detail, covering what is known of Christie's life and tying it to her various works. From her earliest book to her last, the book offers dates, publishing information, plot outlines, character notes, and all the rest--and ties each work to what Christie herself happened to be doing at the time. It's a handy sort of reference.

Unfortunately, I have some issues with Osborne's skill as a critic. Or more specifically, his lack thereof. Osborne is fond of shrugging off Christie's distinctly superior works in favor of her less successful efforts. He also "toes the line" in terms of what Christie fans want to hear (and in some cases prefer not to hear) about their favorite author. So while the book is interesting, useful, and even entertaining in a factual sense, it is considerably less so in an interpretive one. Recommended, but only just.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Plodding but undeniably useful
This book is pretty well summed up in its subtitle: "A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie."

It is also one of those useful and occasionally indispensable volumes compiled by a natural-born plodder. Osborne is the chosen scribbler given the task of producing novelized versions of some of Christie's plays. He clearly is held in high favor by the Christie Trust. As a biographer, it very quickly becomes clear that he is concerned with presenting the Establishment picture of Dame Agatha May Clarissa Miller Christie Mallowan. There will be no surprises and no probing beneath the respectable (save for nearly two weeks in December 1926) life of the public figure.

The one lurid episode in the lady's life, her mysterious disappearance, is wrapped up on pages 51 to 57 of the hardbound edition with no more factual material than that contained in Christie's famously uncommunicative autobiography. Of speculation, there is even less. So little, in fact that the existence of "Agatha," a popular mystery novel by Kathleen Tynan that offers amusing conjectures about Christie's actions and motives, is willfully ignored. This is even more true of the movie based upon the book that featured Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha and Timothy Dalton as Archie. The index of Osborne's book does, indeed, have an entry for Ms. Redgrave, but it refers to a small part she had in the movie of "Murder on the Orient Express," not to her portrayal of Agatha Christie herself.

This ultra orthodox approach to biography does no particular harm. The essentials of Christie's public life are laid out well enough. In all probability, the inner Christie was as respectable as the outer one--but we don't know and with biographers like Charles Osborne, we never shall.

Osborne's treatment of the "Works of Agatha Christie" is that of a mystery fan, not a critic. He provides a sketch of how a work came to be written, identifies the main characters, establishes the premise of novel, story or play, but he never outlines the complete plot and he never, never identifies a culprit.

There are, of course, some critical trappings. Poirot's French, we are informed, is sometimes less than idiomatic. Christie occasionally gave voice to the casual and unthinking anti-Semitism of the class and time into which she had been born. (That deplorable fault faded away with time, particularly after a pre-World War II encounter with a Nazi official stationed in the Middle East. He was perfectly charming to her and her second husband until he shocked her by going all Dalek while talking about the Jews then in Germany: "Exterminate them!") Christie had a thrifty, want-not-waste-not bent for recycling useful plots and details of action, such as three or four occasions in which one character looking over another's shoulder suddenly observes something that will lead to grim results. As Agatha became elderly, her books became less tightly plotted and her dialogue more diffuse. All this is widely known and perfectly acceptable to the Christie Establishment. On the other hand, there is no insight offered as to why, in particular, Christie's prose continues to sell books at a quite remarkable rate while her great contemporaries, Marsh, Allingham and even Sayers have largely fallen by the wayside.

This is not a great book but, for all its plodding ways, it is a useful guide and reference. I assign four stars to it in the sure and certain expectation that I'll give it a toss when something better comes along. I don't think that will be soon.